2021 ZiPS Projections: Chicago Cubs

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

I would argue that the current Cubs squad is a lot like The Godfather: Part III. Brilliance has been supplanted by mere competence, and most of the results look unimpressive when compared to the team’s peak. Like the latter days of Michael Corleone’s criminal empire, the Cubs have fallen from dominance. The manager for those teams is in Los Angeles, the front office’s leading light is gone, and much of the supporting cast has moved on. You can even pretend that whatever sum the Cubs lost in 2020 is a parallel to the $600 million stolen by Don Lucchesi and Archbishop Gilday through International Immobiliare! Heck, maybe Joey Lucchesi will throw a no-hitter against the Cubs.

Some of the central components of the Cubs’ more potent offenses remain in Javier Báez, Anthony Rizzo, and Kris Bryant. But none of them can boast a 2020 anywhere near their best season, and only Rizzo was really a key contributor. All three are free agents after 2021, and with the Cubs crying poor, it doesn’t seem like any big contract offers are in the works. If anything, the speculation this winter has been more about trades than extensions, particularly with Bryant. The larger issue is that all three have seen their projections follow a downward trajectory in recent seasons, so even re-signing all three would be no panacea.

The good news for the Cubs comes from outside Wrigley: if they’re not trying aggressively to win the division, nobody else in the NL Central appears to be either. The Brewers aren’t making big signings and the Cardinals were apparently content to non-tender Kolten Wong. The Pirates will be lucky to win 70 games, and the Cincinnati Reds, the division’s most aggressive team the last two winters, seem more interested in possibly shopping Luis Castillo and/or Sonny Gray than finding a replacement for Trevor Bauer. ZiPS ranks Chicago’s lineup somewhere around 10th-12th in baseball (pending the final team projections), and while that’s not particularly impressive, it may be the best ranking in the NL Central.

Jason Heyward has to demonstrate that his surprisingly solid 2020 revival has legs, but he does get his best offensive projection in a few years. Ian Happ looks a lot like a keeper and is much better in center field than he has any right to be. The problem is what comes after these two; ZiPS remains on the fence about Nico Hoerner’s long-term value, and the only offensive prospect it’s really excited about is Miguel Amaya. Catching prospects, however, will break your heart.

This offense is good enough for now, but it won’t carry the team, and the club will need a lot of investment or clever trading in 2022 to avoid looking unbearably bleak. Speaking of unbearably bleak…

Pitchers

ZiPS is decidedly not a fan of the Cubs’ pitching staff. First, the two exceptions. Yu Darvish is back and he’s a legitimate star with his reconfigured repertoire and dramatically improved control. Despite the rocky start to his stint in Chicago, he’s a wonderful pitcher to have at the top of the rotation. Elsewhere, Kyle Hendricks is one of the best number-two pitchers in the game and was fortunate to reach the majors at a time when pitch movement became sexier than eye-popping radar gun readouts.

But if Steamer is pessimistic about the back of the rotation, ZiPS’ view is more depressing than the end of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Neither Jose Quintana nor Jon Lester, both free agents, got excellent projections, but they’d still project as the third and fourth-best pitchers on the team, respectively. The computer doesn’t see Adbert Alzolay as a good bet to match his 2020 ERA of 3.05 in 21 1/3 innings, barely sees Alec Mills as a major league starter, and pegs Colin Rea as below replacement level. The only starting pitcher outside the top two with a projection you can remotely call sunny is Brailyn Marquez, whose major league debut is literally his only experience above High-A.

Similarly, ZiPS projects the bullpen as a bottom-five group based on the current roster. Most of the marginal relievers already have major league contracts for the 2021 season, making it unlikely that the Cubs will just cut them and move on. The Craig Kimbrel projection does at least suggest adequacy, which the Cubs will happily take if he can consistently maintain that level throughout the entire season. It’s not ideal if he again loses the closer job before he figures out where the strike zone is.

Despite all this, the Cubs still have a good shot at making the playoffs because, again, NL Central stuff. But this year, even if successful on those terms, will feel more valedictory than triumphant, as the Cubs look towards 2022 with a roster that will retain few of the reasons they popped champagne in 2016.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2021 due to injury, and players who were released in 2020. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Finnish industrial death metal fourth-wave ska J-pop band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2021; if it does not, there will be widespread minor adjustments across the board come April.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter or something.